Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/281

comes so when, proclaiming the negation of government as the ultimate negation, he claims the first rank among all the socialists on account of the extreme boldness of this proposition. When the socialists would vie with the Catholics, they are as the wise men of Greece compared with the priests of the East; they are as children who are mistaken for men. The negation of government, so far from being the last of all possible negations, is only a preliminary negation, which future nihilists will place in their list of prolegomena. If Mr. Proudhon does not change his position, he will be dragged like the rest under the Catholic cylinder. All must meet this fate, even the least. He must then either affirm nothingness, or be forced body and soul under this cylinder, with all his negations and affirmations. So long as Mr. Proudhon does not take a bolder position, he entitles me to represent him to the future rationalists as suspected of latent Catholicism and disguised moderantism. Those among the socialists who make no pretensions to an inheritance of Catholic sentiments, say of themselves that they are its antithesis. But Catholicism is not a thesis, and therefore cannot be opposed by an antithesis. It is a synthesis which includes all, which contains and explains all, which cannot be, I shall not say conquered, but even contested, except by a similar synthesis which, like it, includes, contains, and explains all things. Every human thesis and antithesis is comprised in the Catholic synthesis. It attracts and condenses everything to itself by the invincible force of an incommunicable virtue. Those who imagine that they are placed beyond Catholic limits, still remain within them, because within these limits is the atmosphere of intelligences. The